


Sweet Words

by Truthwritaslies



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-08
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truthwritaslies/pseuds/Truthwritaslies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ya'aburnee: Arabic - Both morbid and beautiful at once, this incantatory word means "You bury me," a declaration of one's hope that they'll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Words

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Garak and Julian belong to Paramount and I make no money off this story.

Garak had made a habit of learning everything he could about potential enemies and allies. It was a habit that had stood him in good stead over the course of his long life, especially when allies became enemies. 

And he'd had a new project. Well, not precisely new but definitely rising in priority from "pleasant diversion" to "near immediately relevant".

He starts, of course, with a family tree, going back as far as he can, though he soon has to cut it down to the direct line only, the branches of extended family proving too numerous and frankly uninteresting when one knows that all beings on a world are related in one way or another if one looks far enough back. 

Impressively, on the maternal side Garak makes it as far back as the 11th century A.D., in the old reckoning of earth time. The paternal line he is only able to trace back to 1637 A.D., when the evident progenitor of the line simply appeared one day in the village that he eventually settled in claiming to be the last remaining survivor of a recently destroyed village that the new village had only just heard news of. 

Apparently he'd been quite injured and road weary, which supported his claim a lot, though privately Garak thought that people of that time must have been either quite stupid or simply too used to similar stories,even if the exact details didn't match up.

Next is lessons on cultural norms, of history, religion, integrations and how they think. This inevitably leads to language. 

That is where Garak first discovers the word. Ya'aburnee. He first learns it's definition and only later, after much confusion over it's usage and a call to a noted profesor of language on Earth, does he learn it's true meaning.

It is, he thinks at the time, another of those pretty human conceits. Like true love conquering all and justice seeing no stigma.

Later, when his project has changed yet again; when Julian has made his intentions clear and stated that no less than death would truly separate them, despite their physical location...

Then Garak will remember the word, remember it's true meaning and realize that the humans had the right of it all along. He could not bear to live after having this. 

Having Julian one moment and then not even the hope of seeing him again the next? Truly too cruel a fate to contemplate, even in his darkest moments.

He sometimes wonders if Julian feels the same way and thinks that he must. Julian loves far more easily than Garak; there is no way he wouldn't be affected the same way.


End file.
